Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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Not suddenly did the boom drop down there, not like a falling
star, but on the wings of hope--wings that ever fluttering upward,
yet sank inexorably and slowly closed. The first crash came over
the waters when certain big men over there went to pieces--men on
whose shoulders rested the colossal figure of progress that the
English were carving from the hills at Cumberland Gap. Still
nobody saw why a hurt to the Lion should make the Eagle sore and
so the American spirit at the other gaps and all up the Virginia
valleys that skirt the Cumberland held faithful and dauntless--for
a while. But in time as the huge steel plants grew noiseless, and
the flaming throats of the furnaces were throttled, a sympathetic
fire of dissolution spread slowly North and South and it was plain
only to the wise outsider as merely a matter of time until, all up
and down the Cumberland, the fox and the coon and the quail could
come back to their old homes on corner lots, marked each by a
pathetic little whitewashed post--a tombstone over the graves of a
myriad of buried human hopes. But it was the gap where Hale was
that died last and hardest--and of the brave spirits there, his
was the last and hardest to die.

In the autumn, while June was in New York, the signs were sure but
every soul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed
question of labour and capital was born again, for slowly each
local capitalist went slowly back to his own trade: the blacksmith
to his forge, but the carpenter not to his plane nor the mason to
his brick--there was no more building going on. The engineer took
up his transit, the preacher-politician was oftener in his pulpit,
and the singing teacher started on his round of raucous do-mi-sol-
dos through the mountains again. It was curious to see how each
man slowly, reluctantly and perforce sank back again to his old
occupation--and the town, with the luxuries of electricity, water-
works, bath-tubs and a street railway, was having a hard fight for
the plain necessities of life. The following spring, notes for the
second payment on the lots that had been bought at the great land
sale fell due, and but very few were paid. As no suits were
brought by the company, however, hope did not quite die. June did
not come home for the summer, and Hale did not encourage her to
come--she visited some of her school-mates in the North and took a
trip West to see her father who had gone out there again and
bought a farm. In the early autumn, Devil Judd came back to the
mountains and announced his intention to leave them for good. But
that autumn, the effects of the dead boom became perceptible in
the hills. There were no more coal lands bought, logging ceased,
the factions were idle once more, moonshine stills flourished,
quarrelling started, and at the county seat, one Court day, Devil
Judd whipped three Falins with his bare fists. In the early spring
a Tolliver was shot from ambush and old Judd was so furious at the
outrage that he openly announced that he would stay at home until
he had settled the old scores for good. So that, as the summer
came on, matters between the Falins and the Tollivers were worse
than they had been for years and everybody knew that, with old
Judd at the head of his clan again, the fight would be fought to
the finish. At the Gap, one institution only had suffered in
spirit not at all and that was the Volunteer Police Guard. Indeed,
as the excitement of the boom had died down, the members of that
force, as a vent for their energies, went with more enthusiasm
than ever into their work. Local lawlessness had been subdued by
this time, the Guard had been extending its work into the hills,
and it was only a question of time until it must take a part in
the Falin-Tolliver troubles. Indeed, that time, Hale believed, was
not far away, for Election Day was at hand, and always on that day
the feudists came to the Gap in a search for trouble. Meanwhile,
not long afterward, there was a pitched battle between the
factions at the county seat, and several of each would fight no
more. Next day a Falin whistled a bullet through Devil Judd's
beard from ambush, and it was at such a crisis of all the warring
elements in her mountain life that June's school-days were coming
to a close. Hale had had a frank talk with old Judd and the old
man agreed that the two had best be married at once and live at
the Gap until things were quieter in the mountains, though the old
man still clung to his resolution to go West for good when he was
done with the Falins. At such a time, then, June was coming home.

XXI

Hale was beyond Black Mountain when her letter reached him. His
work over there had to be finished and so he kept in his saddle
the greater part of two days and nights and on the third day rode
his big black horse forty miles in little more than half a day
that he might meet her at the train. The last two years had
wrought their change in him. Deterioration is easy in the hills--
superficial deterioration in habits, manners, personal appearance
and the practices of all the little niceties of life. The morning
bath is impossible because of the crowded domestic conditions of a
mountain cabin and, if possible, might if practised, excite wonder
and comment, if not vague suspicion. Sleeping garments are
practically barred for the same reason. Shaving becomes a rare
luxury. A lost tooth-brush may not be replaced for a month. In
time one may bring himself to eat with a knife for the reason that
it is hard for a hungry man to feed himself with a fork that has
but two tines. The finger tips cease to be the culminating
standard of the gentleman. It is hard to keep a supply of fresh
linen when one is constantly in the saddle, and a constant
weariness of body and a ravenous appetite make a man indifferent
to things like a bad bed and worse food, particularly as he must
philosophically put up with them, anyhow. Of all these things the
man himself may be quite unconscious and yet they affect him more
deeply than he knows and show to a woman even in his voice, his
walk, his mouth--everywhere save in his eyes, which change only in
severity, or in kindliness or when there has been some serious
break-down of soul or character within. And the woman will not
look to his eyes for the truth--which makes its way slowly--
particularly when the woman has striven for the very things that
the man has so recklessly let go. She would never suffer herself
to let down in such a way and she does not understand how a man
can.

Hale's life, since his college doors had closed behind him, had
always been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and had
gone back into it many times. And each time he had dropped, he
dropped the deeper, and for that reason had come back into his own
life each time with more difficulty and with more indifference.
The last had been his roughest year and he had sunk a little more
deeply just at the time when June had been pluming herself for
flight from such depths forever. Moreover, Hale had been dominant
in every matter that his hand or his brain had touched. His habit
had been to say "do this" and it was done. Though he was no longer
acting captain of the Police Guard, he always acted as captain
whenever he was on hand, and always he was the undisputed leader
in all questions of business, politics or the maintenance of order
and law. The success he had forged had hardened and strengthened
his mouth, steeled his eyes and made him more masterful in manner,
speech and point of view, and naturally had added nothing to his
gentleness, his unselfishness, his refinement or the nice
consideration of little things on which women lay such stress. It
was an hour by sun when he clattered through the gap and pushed
his tired black horse into a gallop across the valley toward the
town. He saw the smoke of the little dummy and, as he thundered
over the bridge of the North Fork, he saw that it was just about
to pull out and he waved his hat and shouted imperiously for it to
wait. With his hand on the bell-rope, the conductor, autocrat that
he, too, was, did wait and Hale threw his reins to the man who was
nearest, hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a
slouched hat spotted by contact with the roof of the mines which
he had hastily visited on his way through Lonesome Cove. The
growth of three days' beard was on his face. He wore a gray
woollen shirt, and a blue handkerchief--none too clean--was
loosely tied about his sun-scorched column of a throat; he was
spotted with mud from his waist to the soles of his rough riding
boots and his hands were rough and grimy. But his eye was bright
and keen and his heart thumped eagerly. Again it was the middle of
June and the town was a naked island in a sea of leaves whose
breakers literally had run mountain high and stopped for all time
motionless. Purple lights thick as mist veiled Powell's Mountain.
Below, the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay
along the mountain sides and was streaked here and there with the
long shadow of a deep ravine. The beech trunks on Imboden Hill
gleamed in it like white bodies scantily draped with green, and
the yawning Gap held the yellow light as a bowl holds wine. He had
long ago come to look upon the hills merely as storehouses for
iron and coal, put there for his special purpose, but now the long
submerged sense of the beauty of it all stirred within him again,
for June was the incarnate spirit of it all and June was coming
back to those mountains and--to him.

* * * * * * *

And June--June had seen the change in Hale. The first year he had
come often to New York to see her and they had gone to the theatre
and the opera, and June was pleased to play the part of heroine in
what was such a real romance to the other girls in school and she
was proud of Hale. But each time he came, he seemed less
interested in the diversions that meant so much to her, more
absorbed in his affairs in the mountains and less particular about
his looks. His visits came at longer intervals, with each visit he
stayed less long, and each time he seemed more eager to get away.
She had been shy about appearing before him for the first time in
evening dress, and when he entered the drawing-room she stood
under a chandelier in blushing and resplendent confusion, but he
seemed not to recognize that he had never seen her that way
before, and for another reason June remained confused,
disappointed and hurt, for he was not only unobserving, and
seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that
night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her
beauty, there were others who had not, and smart, dapper college
youths gathered about her like bees around a flower--a triumphant
fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not in
evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had
forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast that he was
made her that night almost ashamed for him. She never guessed what
the matter was, for Hale kept his troubles to himself. He was
always gentle and kind, he was as lavish with her as though he
were a king, and she was as lavish and prodigally generous as
though she were a princess. There seemed no limit to the wizard
income from the investments that Hale had made for her when, as he
said, he sold a part of her stock in the Lonesome Cove mine, and
what she wanted Hale always sent her without question. Only, as
the end was coming on at the Gap, he wrote once to know if a
certain amount would carry her through until she was ready to come
home, but even that question aroused no suspicion in thoughtless
June. And then that last year he had come no more--always, always
he was too busy. Not even on her triumphal night at the end of the
session was he there, when she had stood before the guests and
patrons of the school like a goddess, and had thrilled them into
startling applause, her teachers into open glowing pride, the
other girls into bright-eyed envy and herself into still another
new world. Now she was going home and she was glad to go.

She had awakened that morning with the keen air of the mountains
in her nostrils--the air she had breathed in when she was born,
and her eyes shone happily when she saw through her window the
loved blue hills along which raced the train. They were only a
little way from the town where she must change, the porter said;
she had overslept and she had no time even to wash her face and
hands, and that worried her a good deal. The porter nearly lost
his equilibrium when she gave him half a dollar--for women are not
profuse in the way of tipping--and instead of putting her bag down
on the station platform, he held it in his hand waiting to do her
further service. At the head of the steps she searched about for
Hale and her lovely face looked vexed and a little hurt when she
did not see him.

"Hotel, Miss?" said the porter.

"Yes, please, Harvey!" she called.

An astonished darky sprang from the line of calling hotel-porters
and took her bag. Then every tooth in his head flashed.

"Lordy, Miss June--I never knowed you at all."

June smiled--it was the tribute she was looking for.

"Have you seen Mr. Hale?"

"No'm. Mr. Hale ain't been here for mos' six months. I reckon he
aint in this country now. I aint heard nothin' 'bout him for a
long time."

June knew better than that--but she said nothing. She would rather
have had even Harvey think that he was away. So she hurried to the
hotel--she would have four hours to wait--and asked for the one
room that had a bath attached--the room to which Hale had sent her
when she had passed through on her way to New York. She almost
winced when she looked in the mirror and saw the smoke stains
about her pretty throat and ears, and she wondered if anybody
could have noticed them on her way from the train. Her hands, too,
were dreadful to look at and she hurried to take off her things.

In an hour she emerged freshened, immaculate from her crown of
lovely hair to her smartly booted feet, and at once she went
downstairs. She heard the man, whom she passed, stop at the head
of them and turn to look down at her, and she saw necks craned
within the hotel office when she passed the door. On the street
not a man and hardly a woman failed to look at her with wonder and
open admiration, for she was an apparition in that little town and
it all pleased her so much that she became flushed and conscious
and felt like a queen who, unknown, moved among her subjects and
blessed them just with her gracious presence. For she was unknown
even by several people whom she knew and that, too, pleased her--
to have bloomed so quite beyond their ken. She was like a meteor
coming back to dazzle the very world from which it had flown for a
while into space. When she went into the dining-room for the
midday dinner, there was a movement in almost every part of the
room as though there were many there who were on the lookout for
her entrance. The head waiter, a portly darky, lost his
imperturbable majesty for a moment in surprise at the vision and
then with a lordly yet obsequious wave of his hand, led her to a
table over in a corner where no one was sitting. Four young men
came in rather boisterously and made for her table. She lifted her
calm eyes at them so haughtily that the one in front halted with
sudden embarrassment and they all swerved to another table from
which they stared at her surreptitiously. Perhaps she was mistaken
for the comic-opera star whose brilliant picture she had seen on a
bill board in front of the "opera house." Well, she had the voice
and she might have been and she might yet be--and if she were,
this would be the distinction that would be shown her. And, still
as it was she was greatly pleased.

At four o'clock she started for the hills. In half an hour she was
dropping down a winding ravine along a rock-lashing stream with
those hills so close to the car on either side that only now and
then could she see the tops of them. Through the window the keen
air came from the very lungs of them, freighted with the coolness
of shadows, the scent of damp earth and the faint fragrance of
wild flowers, and her soul leaped to meet them. The mountain sides
were showered with pink and white laurel (she used to call it
"ivy") and the rhododendrons (she used to call them "laurel") were
just beginning to blossom--they were her old and fast friends--
mountain, shadow, the wet earth and its pure breath, and tree,
plant and flower; she had not forgotten them, and it was good to
come back to them. Once she saw an overshot water-wheel on the
bank of the rushing little stream and she thought of Uncle Billy;
she smiled and the smile stopped short--she was going back to
other things as well. The train had creaked by a log-cabin set in
the hillside and then past another and another; and always there
were two or three ragged children in the door and a haggard
unkempt woman peering over their shoulders. How lonely those
cabins looked and how desolate the life they suggested to her now-
-NOW! The first station she came to after the train had wound down
the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with
mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal
of laughter, chaffing and noise, and all three went on within and
without the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned
her like a lightning stroke. They were HER people out there on the
platform and inside the car ahead--those rough men in slouch hats,
jeans and cowhide boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice,
their cheeks and eyes on fire with moonshine, and those women in
poke-bonnets with their sad, worn, patient faces on which the
sympathetic good cheer and joy of the moment sat so strangely. She
noticed their rough shoes and their homespun gowns that made their
figures all alike and shapeless, with a vivid awakening of early
memories. She might have been one of those narrow-lived girls
outside, or that bride within had it not been for Jack--Hale. She
finished the name in her own mind and she was conscious that she
had. Ah, well, that was a long time ago and she was nothing but a
child and she had thrown herself at his head. Perhaps it was
different with him now and if it was, she would give him the
chance to withdraw from everything. It would be right and fair and
then life was so full for her now. She was dependent on nobody--on
nothing. A rainbow spanned the heaven above her and the other end
of it was not in the hills. But one end was and to that end she
was on her way. She was going to just such people as she had seen
at the station. Her father and her kinsmen were just such men--her
step-mother and kinswomen were just such women. Her home was
little more than just such a cabin as the desolate ones that
stirred her pity when she swept by them. She thought of how she
felt when she had first gone to Lonesome Cove after a few months
at the Gap, and she shuddered to think how she would feel now. She
was getting restless by this time and aimlessly she got up and
walked to the front of the car and back again to her seat, hardly
noticing that the other occupants were staring at her with some
wonder. She sat down for a few minutes and then she went to the
rear and stood outside on the platform, clutching a brass rod of
the railing and looking back on the dropping darkness in which the
hills seemed to be rushing together far behind as the train
crashed on with its wake of spark-lit rolling smoke. A cinder
stung her face, and when she lifted her hand to the spot, she saw
that her glove was black with grime. With a little shiver of
disgust she went back to her seat and with her face to the
blackness rushing past her window she sat brooding--brooding. Why
had Hale not met her? He had said he would and she had written him
when she was coming and had telegraphed him at the station in New
York when she started. Perhaps he HAD changed. She recalled that
even his letters had grown less frequent, shorter, more hurried
the past year--well, he should have his chance. Always, however,
her mind kept going back to the people at the station and to her
people in the mountains. They were the same, she kept repeating to
herself--the very same and she was one of them. And always she
kept thinking of her first trip to Lonesome Cove after her
awakening and of what her next would be. That first time Hale had
made her go back as she had left, in home-spun, sun-bonnet and
brogans. There was the same reason why she should go back that way
now as then--would Hale insist that she should now? She almost
laughed aloud at the thought. She knew that she would refuse and
she knew that his reason would not appeal to her now--she no
longer cared what her neighbours and kinspeople might think and
say. The porter paused at her seat.

"How much longer is it?" she asked.

"Half an hour, Miss."

June went to wash her face and hands, and when she came back to
her seat a great glare shone through the windows on the other side
of the car. It was the furnace, a "run" was on and she could see
the streams of white molten metal racing down the narrow channels
of sand to their narrow beds on either side. The whistle shrieked
ahead for the Gap and she nerved herself with a prophetic sense of
vague trouble at hand.

* * * * * * *

At the station Hale had paced the platform. He looked at his watch
to see whether he might have time to run up to the furnace, half a
mile away, and board the train there. He thought he had and he was
about to start when the shriek of the coming engine rose beyond
the low hills in Wild Cat Valley, echoed along Powell's Mountain
and broke against the wrinkled breast of the Cumberland. On it
came, and in plain sight it stopped suddenly to take water, and
Hale cursed it silently and recalled viciously that when he was in
a hurry to arrive anywhere, the water-tower was always on the
wrong side of the station. He got so restless that he started for
it on a run and he had gone hardly fifty yards before the train
came on again and he had to run back to beat it to the station--
where he sprang to the steps of the Pullman before it stopped--
pushing the porter aside to find himself checked by the crowded
passengers at the door. June was not among them and straightway he
ran for the rear of the car.

June had risen. The other occupants of the car had crowded forward
and she was the last of them. She had stood, during an irritating
wait, at the water-tower, and now as she moved slowly forward
again she heard the hurry of feet behind her and she turned to
look into the eager, wondering eyes of John Hale.

"June!" he cried in amazement, but his face lighted with joy and
he impulsively stretched out his arms as though he meant to take
her in them, but as suddenly he dropped them before the startled
look in her eyes, which, with one swift glance, searched him from
head to foot. They shook hands almost gravely.

XXII

June sat in the little dummy, the focus of curious eyes, while
Hale was busy seeing that her baggage was got aboard. The checks
that she gave him jingled in his hands like a bunch of keys, and
he could hardly help grinning when he saw the huge trunks and the
smart bags that were tumbled from the baggage car--all marked with
her initials. There had been days when he had laid considerable
emphasis on pieces like those, and when he thought of them
overwhelming with opulent suggestions that debt-stricken little
town, and, later, piled incongruously on the porch of the cabin on
Lonesome Cove, he could have laughed aloud but for a nameless
something that was gnawing savagely at his heart.

He felt almost shy when he went back into the car, and though June
greeted him with a smile, her immaculate daintiness made him
unconsciously sit quite far away from her. The little fairy-cross
was still at her throat, but a tiny diamond gleamed from each end
of it and from the centre, as from a tiny heart, pulsated the
light of a little blood-red ruby. To him it meant the loss of
June's simplicity and was the symbol of her new estate, but he
smiled and forced himself into hearty cheerfulness of manner and
asked her questions about her trip. But June answered in halting
monosyllables, and talk was not easy between them. All the while
he was watching her closely and not a movement of her eye, ear,
mouth or hand--not an inflection of her voice--escaped him. He saw
her sweep the car and its occupants with a glance, and he saw the
results of that glance in her face and the down-dropping of her
eyes to the dainty point of one boot. He saw her beautiful mouth
close suddenly tight and her thin nostrils quiver disdainfully
when a swirl of black smoke, heavy with cinders, came in with an
entering passenger through the front door of the car. Two half-
drunken men were laughing boisterously near that door and even her
ears seemed trying to shut out their half-smothered rough talk.
The car started with a bump that swayed her toward him, and when
she caught the seat with one hand, it checked as suddenly,
throwing her the other way, and then with a leap it sprang ahead
again, giving a nagging snap to her head. Her whole face grew red
with vexation and shrinking distaste, and all the while, when the
little train steadied into its creaking, puffing, jostling way,
one gloved hand on the chased silver handle of her smart little
umbrella kept nervously swaying it to and fro on its steel-shod
point, until she saw that the point was in a tiny pool of tobacco
juice, and then she laid it across her lap with shuddering
swiftness.

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